


light carries on endlessly, even after death

by finnsmoose



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, happy ending I think?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:08:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22993717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finnsmoose/pseuds/finnsmoose
Summary: Michael doesn't survive the fire, and leaves Jeremy behind to adjust to losing his player one.
Relationships: Jeremy Heere & Michael Mell
Comments: 1
Kudos: 22





	light carries on endlessly, even after death

**Author's Note:**

> title and lyrics are from saturn by sleeping at last.
> 
> this is literally what happens when you listen to the goodbye song on a loop because you need to ugly cry and let your emotions out after a tough day. i don't know what this is, but have my first piece of writing for be more chill. i have a happy expensive headphones fake dating au in my drafts that's about to be edited, so stay tuned for that! 
> 
> also, i still haven't really mastered writing for the squip so for the sake of the story, jeremy's grief is too strong for the squip to come through so that explains the absence. enjoy!!

_you taught me the courage of stars before you left_

_how light carries on endlessly, even after death_

_with shortness of breath, you explained the infinite_

_how rare and beautiful it is to even exist_

His father breaks the news to him when he comes home from school, two days after the party.

He only just got a call from Michael’s mothers. The body had been badly burned from the fire, and they were only able to identify the body now.

Michael is dead.

They didn’t even know he was at the party, but once they heard Jeremy had been invited it made sense to them that Michael went too. “You two were always inseparable,” his father says, through choked back tears.

How wrong everyone is.

When he goes up to his room, the first thing he notices is one of Michael’s old hoodies hanging halfway out of his laundry hamper. Jeremy realises that Michael had left it behind the last time he was here, when they played Apocalypse of the Damned and spoke about how they’d be able to get through whatever the Squip would throw their way. He grits his teeth against the urge to cry, and yanks it from the hamper, not caring that it’s probably dirty.

It smells like Michael, enough so that he buries himself in it, shrugs into the sleeves that are much too big for him and curls up on the side of the bed that Michael always took when he slept over. There’s no dent, or even a hint of his cologne or sweat. It’s like he had never been there at all. It’s been a while since Michael had been over. (It's been just as long as Jeremy had been ignoring his only true friend's existence.) Still, Jeremy presses his forehead to the pillow, closes his eyes and breathes.

At some point, the door to his room opens, and he recognises his father’s tattered old slippers standing across from him.

“He’s dead,” he says, the words ripped out from his throat, sounding like a stranger. “He’s dead, he’s not coming back.”

“I know,” his father says softly, sitting down on the bed, and Jeremy’s body dips closer to his father. “I’m so sorry, kid.”

He thinks of the fire. He wishes he could jump in it now, and finally be with Michael again. He knows Michael wouldn’t want it that way though, so he won’t.

He wants to scream until his throat is hoarse, to cry until he’s run out of tears, he wants to tear the room apart with his bare hands. He wants so many things – Michael, mostly, _always_ Michael. His eyes burn with tears, and he lets out a harsh sob, squeezing at the ends of the hoodie, gripping onto what feels like the only part of Michael that’s left.

Michael died thinking that Jeremy didn’t care about him anymore. He’ll never get to apologise. He wants to throw up.

His father sits him up, wraps an arm around him and squeezes him tightly, burying his face in the back of Jeremy’s neck. He can feel the wetness of his father’s own tears, and listens to the sobs he can’t contain. He’s grieving for Michael too. Michael was practically a second son to him, with the amount of times he was over at the Heere residence. The urge to help his father, to make this whole thing better somehow is there, but it’s overshadowed by the huge black mass of grief currently settled in his chest.

After, he finally starts acting like a father again. Jeremy watches from his bed as he begins to wears his pants again, and tidy up after himself. He cooks meals, and leaves plates of food by Jeremy’s bed. He collects them, untouched, and Jeremy pretends he doesn’t notice the worry in his father’s features. “You should eat something.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I know. But please, for me?” his father says, reminding him of the times that he had protected Jeremy from the monsters under his bed when he was growing up. Jeremy had been too scared to sleep, but his parents would let him crawl into their bed, doing their best to protect him from whatever it was that got him so worked up. “I’m worried about you. You don’t want me to call your mother, do you?”

He bites into the cold slice of toast at that, and his father gives him a ghost of a smile. He tastes nothing.

“Is it supposed to feel like this?” he asks, playing with the slice of toast in his hands, purposefully avoiding looking at his dad.

“Like what?”

“Like…like there’s this big hole inside.”

His father doesn’t have an answer for him, although he doesn’t think there’s much anyone can actually do for him at this moment.

He remembers his mother taking him aside when his grandmother had died when he was twelve, and she had placed an arm over his shoulder and said, “Jeremy sweetie, it’s better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all.”

It didn’t make sense to him at the time, and it makes even less sense to him _now_.

Jeremy loved and _still_ loves, with his entire heart, and he has lost in the worst way possible. It doesn't make him feel better.

He stays in bed, flicking through channels on the television, looking for anything to distract him from his real life. He’s about to fall asleep when he feels a blanket thrown over him. His father turns the television off, and runs a hand through his hair, softly. “I’m sorry Jeremy,” he hears his father whisper. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I wish I knew how to make you feel better, but I don’t. I don’t know how to make this better. But you and me, yeah? We’ll get through this. I promise.”

Christine comes to visit one day, bringing some food over with her. Jeremy can only stare at the food she’s left for him. “Tell me how to deal with this.”

Christine looks up, frowning. “What do you mean?”

“Tell me how to make it stop.” He’s desperate, choking back the sudden wave of sadness.

Christine swallows, brushing a hand through her hair. “I can’t. You don’t make it stop. You learn to live with it.”

The thing is, he doesn’t want to live with this. “I want him back Christine. I want to get high with him again and play more video games, and drink more disgusting sodas. I want to move in with him at college, to fight over what we’re going to have for dinner, and see him become the man he was supposed to be. But it’s all gone, and I can’t do anything.”

Christine’s silent, but she embraces Jeremy, scooping him in for a bear hug.

“I’ll never love anyone like I loved – _love_ – Michael,” he says, and he thinks that Christine gets it. “He was the best friend I could have ever asked for, and I never even thanked him. I didn’t deserve him.”

“Don’t say that,” Christine says, inching away from him. She doesn’t know the truth, and he’s too cowardly to tell her. “Just because he’s not with us anymore, it doesn’t mean that you should stop loving him.”

He’s not sure how long they sit there together sharing stories, but it’s the first day he’s not wanted to punch someone since he found out, so he takes it as a win. 

After that, days start to get a little easier.

He still feels the crushing weight of grief every day. He still wakes up expecting to wake up to a text from Michael asking if he wants to hang out with him, still cries when he realises he’s alone. There’s still an emptiness that he can’t seem to shake. He still misses Michael with every fibre of his body, and he knows that he always will.

But he has his father. He has Christine, and Brooke, and their friends, and he has Michael, _still_ has Michael. The memories never leave, and he’ll use them to motivate himself to make Michael proud. His Squip gets shut down for good when someone (Rich, he thinks – but he hasn’t found the courage to speak Rich after the fire yet, so his suspicions aren’t confirmed) drinks some Mountain Dew red. He falls in love, and acts in shows at school, and he becomes liked on his own merits. He’s still the same anxious kid, but he learns to live life without the voice in his head, and he learns to navigate his way through this life without his player one by his side. 

Sometimes, if he tries hard enough, he can almost imagine Michael at the front of the crowd, eyes soft as he watches Jeremy play Macbeth in the next school play or eventually standing on the podium in front of his friends and family at graduation, happy that he’s doing well. He holds on dearly to this, and thinks for the first time that he’ll be okay, someday.

_with shortness of breath, **i'll** explain the infinite_

_how rare and beautiful it truly is that we exist_


End file.
